


Washable Permanence

by cosetties



Category: Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Established Relationship, Fluff, M/M, Self-Esteem Issues, my friend said this made her puke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-29
Updated: 2013-07-29
Packaged: 2017-12-21 18:04:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,335
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/903238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosetties/pseuds/cosetties
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The marker felt uncomfortably cool and wet against Grantaire’s skin. He cleared his throat. “What are you doing?” </p><p>Enjolras paid careful attention to the bend in Grantaire’s nose, making sure to trace over it at least three times. </p><p>“I’m circling every part of you think I think is beautiful,” Enjolras said matter-of-factly.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Washable Permanence

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry for the mindless fluff? I don't even know what prompted me to write this.

Grantaire had always taken pride in his ability to hold himself together in stressful moments such as these. A widely renown example of cool detachment, he figured he had become desensitized to the shit that constantly burdened his life, allowing him to lock all the bad things away in a room in the back of his brain and throw away the key.

Sex with Enjolras, though, was never meant to be this stressful.

Not even the familiar buzz of the razor managed to still his shaking, and he unceremoniously threw it onto the counter, still covered in shaving cream. The faucet knob nearly slipped out of his hand when he reached to turn it. The water ran hot, much too hot for the morning after a night of debauchery with Enjolras—a detail his brain refused to leave alone.

White-knuckled, Grantaire gripped the edges of the sink. During his shower, condensation had collected on the bathroom mirror, and he wiped it with his sleeve, to take a long, hard look at his reflection. Same misshapen nose, same scar over his left eyebrow Enjolras claimed gave him character, same too-full lower lip.

“Grantaire, are you done in there?” Grantaire heard a shuffling of blankets and a creak of the old mattress he had never replaced. Sleeping comfortably had never made his list of priorities.

Enjolras’s voice was just this side of petulant. “You said quick shower.”

“I just—“ His hands shook again as he picked up the razor. “Give me a minute to shave.”

“But I like your scruff,” Enjolras said, and goddamn, he must still have been half-asleep. Alert, Enjolras was all fire and revolution, not soft endearments and cuddles.

Sometimes, the revelation came to him in bursts at inopportune moments. When he stared at Enjolras during one of his speeches at the Café Musain, commanding all the attention of the room using a strategic combination of well-chosen words and scare tactics. When he finished yet another sketch of Enjolras and remembered that they no longer had to be kept secret from their subject. When he stood in his bathroom, his face half-shaven, trying to regain his composure after sleeping with the man he had been in love with approximately five years.

When the realization hit him, it always came with a mix of ache and elation. He dreaded the day Enjolras would come to his senses and realize Grantaire had nothing good to offer the world but cynicism and a startling ability to hold his alcohol. The day the epiphany crossed Enjolras’s mind, he would run far, far away.

Later, he’d wonder to himself how he didn’t accidentally slash himself with the razor, but his paintings came out fine even with alcohol tampering with his coordination, so he shouldn’t have been too surprised. When he made his way back into the bedroom, Enjolras still lay on the bed, his upper body propped up by an elbow, his wire-rimmed glasses already on. Enjolras hated wearing contacts in the mornings, a source of great frustration for Grantaire because, well. Enjolras in _glasses_.

His face lit up when Grantaire re-entered the room in a pair of old boxers and a gray t-shirt. “You look worried,” he admonished, his voice still rough with sleep. “You shouldn’t look worried.”

“You just had sex with me.” It was explanation enough, but Enjolras still squinted as if to decipher Grantaire’s real feelings.

Well, good luck with that. Grantaire was a complex fucking individual, and he refused to have his emotions packaged into neat little labeled boxes. Enjolras was no Grantaire-whisperer anyway; hell, _Grantaire_ was no Grantaire-whisperer. If he wanted to drown in his own confusion when he really had no right to be confused about sex with the incredibly hot blond who still inexplicably occupied his bed, then that was just a sign of his complex fucking individuality.

Enjolras played with the edges of the comforter. “Yes, we just had sex. Would you like for me to rehash the details?”

Rehashing, no. Reenactment, he could be up for.

“You just made a joke. Who are you and what have you done to Enjolras?”

Enjolras’s elbow slid out from under him, and he fell onto the bed in a messy sprawl, bouncing a little. “I’ve got a better one. Do you want to hear a really good joke?” he said, his voice half-muffled by the pillow.

Grantaire hummed in agreement.

“The NRA,” Enjolras responded solemnly.

Enjolras rolled over into Grantaire’s empty side of the bed and pressed his cheek into the slight indentation he had left in the pillow. The pads of his glasses pushed against his nose, sure to leave marks. Locking eyes with Grantaire, his arms curled around the pillow in a caress, which, as a loving boyfriend, was a really shitty thing of him to do. What was Grantaire supposed to do with his sudden desire to be a pillow?

Grantaire leaned against the doorjamb in a pose he hoped emanated casualness. It didn’t. “Is gun control your new flavor of the week?”

“You’re my new flavor of the week,” Enjolras corrected, “Or month, or year, or an indefinite amount of time which both of us refuse to define but will probably stretch to forever because we are the only people who can put up with each other.”

The noise that choked out of Grantaire’s mouth verged on a sob. These little snippets, little hints of a heart Enjolras usually tried to hide behind the veneer of cold, calculating, and determined to do anything for change, took nothing out of Enjolras. They were his way of compensating for the lack of public displays of affection and his inability to comprehend the necessity of little affectionate things that couples do for their significant others.

The effect they had on Grantaire, well, these feelings would take a twenty-page dissertation to explain.

Glaring playfully, Enjolras looked him up and down. When he finally decided Grantaire was adequate company, he beckoned to him, and wow, that should not have looked as _come hither_ as it actually did.

“C’mere, don’t just stand there,” he demanded. A feeble hand shot out of the blankets to pull Grantaire closer, but it dropped again just as quickly.

“Are you asking me to cuddle?”

“It’s Saturday,” Enjolras said by way of answer.

When Grantaire seated himself gingerly on the edge of the bed, Enjolras drew an arm around his waist and nosed at his boxer-clad hip. Still mumbling sleepily, Enjolras laced his fingers with Grantaire’s and tugged the other man down on top of him, a mighty feat considering his state of wakefulness.

Grantaire automatically threw out his hands to catch himself, and he stayed like that, hands and knees bracketing Enjolras’s body until the other man turned on his back to gaze at him through half-lidded eyes.

He felt a hand on his forearm, tracing the straining muscles. “Tense,” was the only word Enjolras managed to whisper before his eyes closed again. Shifting his shoulders, he burrowed back down into the soft mattress.  

“That I am.” The steady rise and fall of Enjolras’s chest captivated Grantaire, and he felt himself drifting closer until his lips met Enjolras’s forehead in a chaste kiss.  “You look beautiful.”

It was a compliment and a lamentation all at once.

The rest of the sentence went unsaid. _And I’m not._

Grantaire had never been meant for the whole self-esteem thing. Complex fucking individuals had demons hiding in the corners of their brains, apparently, and his were the self-doubts that grew with every time he let his friends down, every alcoholic drink he brought to his lips, every sketch that ended as a balled-up mess in the trash.

Enjolras’s eyes fluttered open. Restricted by Grantaire’s limbs, he kept eye contact with the other man as his hand scrabbled clumsily at the bedside table until it wrapped around the handle of the drawer. It squeaked, a painful screeching sound, as it opened. Fixing his furniture wasn’t high on Grantaire’s list of priorities either.

Enjolras’s fingers clumsily worked on opening the box of washable Crayola markers, a standard eight-pack Grantaire vaguely remembered stuffing into the drawer after drawing dicks on Courfeyrac’s face that one time he fell asleep in Grantaire’s bed. He was nothing if not refined.

He drew out the red marker, concentrating fiercely, then tilted his head to the side before drawing a circle on the tip of Grantaire’s nose. His movements were measured, and he stuck his tongue out of the side of his mouth, like this was the most difficult task he had ever been faced with.

 The marker felt uncomfortably cool and wet against Grantaire’s skin. He cleared his throat. “What are you _doing?”_

Enjolras paid careful attention to the bend in Grantaire’s nose, making sure to trace over it at least three times.

“I’m circling every part of you think I think is beautiful,” Enjolras said matter-of-factly.

Grantaire’s fingers snaked around Enjolras’s wrist to stop his movements. “You’re biased.”

Scowling, Enjolras broke out of Grantaire’s grip—he could pretend to himself, later, that he had tried to stop Enjolras—and set to work on every knuckle of his hands, permanently scarred from the fights Bahorel always managed to drag him into.

“So are you.” Enjolras punctuated each word with a particularly hard press of the marker. “Biased towards me. Biased against yourself.” The tip of the marker lingered longer than necessary around Grantaire’s collarbones. “Don’t deny it.”

“I wasn’t going to—“

Enjolras hooked a leg around Grantaire’s ankle and flipped them over, landing on Grantaire’s stomach with a soft _oomph_. He quickly scrambled into position, pinning Grantaire’s legs down with his weight. Grantaire made a valiant effort to struggle against his captor—though Enjolras, with his bedhead and tired eyes, didn’t make much of a menacing villain.

His conviction to escape dissipated when Enjolras’s lips met his. His lips were dry, and the kiss was more tentative than Grantaire would have liked, but when he attempted to deepen it, Enjolras pulled away with a laugh.

“Seriously?” Grantaire barked, but Enjolras held his lips shut as he drew a careful oval around Grantaire’s mouth.

His hair brushed Grantaire’s cheek as he whispered into Grantaire’s ear, “I especially like this part of you.”

“Great,” he said sarcastically, “now I look like a clown.”

Enjolras laughed, a sound that started low in his belly and reverberated around the whole room. “If you gave me enough time, you’d wake up covered in marker ink.”

The frown absorbing the energy of the room quirked up slightly. Enjolras continued to slide down his body, lifting Grantaire’s shirt over his head as he worked on his naked torso. Grantaire laid back on the pillow and _felt._ The rhythmic markings of the marker soothed him into a half-stupor, but he still tracked every move Enjolras made.  

His fingers itched to snatch the marker out of Enjolras’s hands, to warn him he was completely wrong about every goddamn thing, but a part of him—a part that grew with every passing day—told him to lie back on his pillow and believe.

Grantaire groaned when Enjolras plopped himself down directly on top of him, knocking the air out of his lungs. He begins drawing again. “And this is the part that made me notice you.”

Grantaire blinked rapidly.

“What’s nice about my _forehead_?”

Enjolras scowled. “I can’t exactly circle your brain now, can I? I thought you liked symbolism. You’re an artist.”

“Please never tell Jehan that you think this counts as symbolism.”

They stayed like that for a few minutes, with Enjolras staring and Grantaire shifting awkwardly to avoid Enjolras’s piercing scrutiny. Enjolras’s eyes should tone down the blue, really now, no one needed that much sex appeal.

“I don’t do this very often,” Enjolras admitted. He waved a hand in the air. “This whole—“

“The romance thing?” Grantaire offered.

Enjolras looked so lost that Grantaire pulled him down for a quick neck nuzzle, and it turned into kissing and biting, which would have turned into wonderfully needed morning sex if Enjolras hadn’t pulled away. Grantaire’s hands grabbed at air but couldn’t grab hold of his boyfriend.

“I may not do this often, but I do care about you. More than you think you deserve.”

Grantaire traced the lines of Enjolras’s face, reveling in the smoothness underneath the calloused pads of his own fingers. Enjolras never once flinched away from Grantaire’s touch, but he looked impossibly vulnerable. Grantaire never had that kind of power before, and he had never imagined he would ever have that kind of power over Enjolras. His hands shook again, right at the bridge of Enjolras’s nose, where glasses met skin.

If Grantaire could choose a hue to color Enjolras with, he would harvest the shine of gold or silver or diamonds—something striking. He would cover Enjolras’s entire body with it. Nothing deserved to be left out, not the most minuscule spot of skin, not even the scar on Enjolras’s knee that he had gotten from a bike accident when he was young. Grantaire couldn’t make do with thin circles—he needed buckets full of color.

With forced casualness, Grantaire said, “I can’t believe you like my smarts most when _this_ hot body is underneath you.” He wiggled his hips.

Enjolras shoved at Grantaire. There was the Enjolras he knew and annoyed on a constant basis. “Shut up.”

“I need a shower. Again. Thank you for that.” Grantaire cocked his head at the open bathroom door. “Want to join me?”

Enjolras stretched his arms over his head, yawning. The strenuous act of drawing circles must have sucked the energy out of him. “Actually, I need a nap. Give me half an hour.”

When Enjolras woke, he found his hand clasped in Grantaire’s, their joined hands lying atop Grantaire’s chest. He flexed his fingers curiously, wondering when that had happened. He blinked in surprise when he saw it. 

There, in bright red, someone had drawn a wide circle where their fingers laced together.

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi on [tumblr](http://cossetcosette.tumblr.com/)!


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